The present invention relates to cookware for use in microwave ovens and more particularly to a cooking utensil for holding a food-containing pouch to be placed in a microwave oven.
The convenience of pre-cooked foods which are packaged in flexible envelopes or pouches and which also serve as the cooking utensil for the food is a desirable feature firmly established in the marketplace. The inconvenience of using tongs, hot pads, etc. to retrieve the heated pouch from a pot of boiling water or a convection type oven has not proved a deterrent since the sales of such frozen food products has increased year after year.
The advent of the microwave oven with its abbreviated cooking cycles resulted in an even greater demand for precooked frozen foods, although handling of the heated pouch remained a problem.
In addition to the retrieval of the heated pouch, there is the problem of handling the pouch the extract the food and transfer it to a suitable container for consumption. Such handling is compounded by the fact that the heated food is now soft and/or fluid and is not supported by the flexible pouch, thereby making it difficult to handle the pouch for removal of the contents.